Whiteout DVD review

Cliché-ridden thriller with Kate Beckinsale is adapted from a graphic novel

By
Laura Chubb
15 March 2010

1/5Dir Dominic Sena US (18+)US Marshall Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) fights her way through a blizzard of clichés as she tries to unravel the mysterious death of a geologist found on the Antarctic ice. In adapting the graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber, screenwriting brothers Jon and Eric Hoeber have employed every cliché in the book: the cop with a past, the secret buried for 50 years, the red herrings that smell a bit funny, and the race against time.

Winter is about to set in for six months, as Carrie wonders who she can trust in this hostile, alien landscape – the paranoid, knife-wielding geologist, the amiable black pilot, the handsome but evasive UN investigator? Meanwhile, the ice-axe-wielding killer continues to stalk his victims, his identity hidden behind dark goggles. John Frizzel’s overworked soundtrack keeps telling us how exciting everything is, but it feels as if we’re frozen in time. Not so much a white-out as wipe-out.Nigel Floyd